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Saturday, July 31, 2010

So over the past few days I started re-organizing the man-cave/dungeon were I spend probably a 1/4 of my waking life in. During this process I started to re-organize my 'bitz box.' At some point I don't know exactly when but my bits box went from like a baggy, to the little orange fastner thingy you see on top of the red tool box and eventually somehow through my hobby addiction it now fills that whole tool box plus :D

Not sure how but slowly over time that thing just kept collecting more and more bits, a friend decided to download a ton of stuff and I ended up with the lot, I went ahead and bought a Ravenwing Squadron even though I really only needed like three bikes because it's such a value, and so on.

I'm starting to see the slow transformation from a totally sane 'normal' person into a cravy train model guy or even some like this guy:

At some point this guy decided it was better to hand bake every single Tile and Brick in that huge frickkin model. Ok, yeah that sounds great... How long did it take, only 30 years!

What is the difference between our community and this guy? Is there one? Does that even matter?

Is it the social element? The competitive element? Why are some people, even more of the model orientyed folks in our community, not locked in our shed for thirty years making models and not showing them off?

Cheers,

Hashshashin

Ps. I think that model is a total crazy achievement and I am not trying to sound mean in any way, when I saw that it blew my mind. Check out the links under guy to see more.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Was pleasantly surprised to see the newest FW newsletter in my inbox this A.M.

The first of our new Space Marine armour sets is this fantastic MkIII Armour Set sculpted by Will Hayes. The full resin kit provides enough parts to build 5 Space Marines in MkIII 'Iron' Armour, including two different sets of legs, shoulder pads, arms, torsos and helmets. You can see these here, along with a gallery of photos showing examples of how these brilliant parts can be combined with plastic Space Marine kits.

The MkIII 'Iron' Armour is a variant of the previous 'Crusade' pattern adapted with additional armour plates to the front, as well as a reinforced helmet faceplate and strengthened vambraces for the savage firefights of fleet-basedboarding actions. This extra armour turns an already resilient Marine into an almost unstoppable juggernaut within the cramped confines of a ship. This detailed kit can be pre-ordered for despatch in the week commencingAugust 23rd.

And that's not all, they are also releasing old skool bolters and special weapons packs. Looks like they are planning some type of boarding actions IA: type book based on some of the other new releases (boarding thingy esp) as well, but these parts are going to totally fuel the already avid pre-heresy crowd, which I say is great!

This model is at a similiar stage to the DW LandRaider from yesterday, in fact I'll probably do most of the weathering of these two together, I mean they are semi-realted, Eligos being a Heresy era fallen and the DeathWing's mission being to find and redeem (aka torture alot) him, so that's nice...

Achieved the wing and sword motifs by spraying Mechrite red blotches onto the areas I knew art would go and then stippled Blood red patches over that to give it a layered and blotchy look. Then I used Art Masking Fluid to mask off the wings sword etc. Next step black spray paint, and then peel away masking fluid and viola!

Added some magnets to the rear hatch and roof sections and haven't gone back and painted them yet, so ignore those two shiny disks ;)

And finally in an overdue response to Col. Cobane I will list the colors and steps in the interior of the Valkyrie:

III} Sponge weathered the whole surface, paying extra attention to the areas that would see more wear and tear like the center of the floors versus the edges, scratches along the doors were they slide open, etc.

IV} Painted all the doo-hickies red and blue and green added some very slight highlights as well.

V} Sprayed the whole thing gloss varnish

VI} Further weathering done using a pencil... Yes a pencil they totally rock and give the most realistic Metal sheen I ever seen, I use them alot on metal (and also treads) and sometimes I will go back over a sponged place and draw in some deeper scratches using the pencil to illistrate some exposed metal showing through.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Painted and sponge weathered, but no use of washes, powders or oil based paints yet. I like to use techniques I learned from IA: Model Masterclass V.1 (which you should get if you don't already have it)

Went for this Travertine stone type look on the front and side details like the icons and the arched windows from the Fortress of Emo.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Back again and I stil got more planned for later this week. Finally feel like I've figured more what this blog should be for me and hopefully for you all as well.

Anyway onto business, its story time:

I recently won a small 500 pt tourney type event at a LGS here in Colorado. One day I just stopped into this shop and when I asked about 40K they said they were hosting a "tournament" on the weekend $5 bucks to enter winner takes gift card equal to total amount collected. A 500 pt tourney, I thought ok... 500 pts is a strange sized game to play but using the new BA codex and my good ol' trusty World Eaters models I was able to field a nice (and pretty cheesy) counts as army.

The Land Raider's presence totally unbalanced everything at 500 pts, in retrospect I probably should have realized these guys weren't super well played, but oh well it was a good time all around and even the one guy I faced who literally couldn't hurt my LR at all had a fun time. And at such low points the games were super short. Played four games came out with 3 wins and a draw so I won the grand prize of $25, which brings me to the point of the post:

So costing in at $24 and change this fit the bill for something I could buy with the winnings and only spend like a buck (taxes) or something. I was pleasantly surprised by the size and thickness of the casting, some of the details are a little 'blurry' but not bad at all (nothing like the Blastscape* fiasco). This one of the Kits that GW has made in China, like the Fortress, the skull thingy, and the Battle board (I think?). I attribute the (relative) inexpensiveness and the loss of some detail to this fact.

Opening this box up you're greeted with 2 sprues, one with the statue on it and the other one with the Aquilla and the building rubble thingy, as well as the statue's head which was just rolling around in the box.

Overall, I really like this kit, actually more then I thought I would, and again the size and bulk of the statue especially is quite nice. I will be using at least the rubble and the Aquila on my display board for the Hashshishian 113th.

I give this kit a 4/5 it's pretty cheap for the volume of plastic and gives you a couple different types of terrain that can easily be intergrated with GW and DIY terrain pieces. All of the pieces are useful, even the little-ish rubble pile is actually a decent size. Really the statues would look good as a pair (O.o) but I doubt I'll get another one of these so I guess my marine dood will just have to hang alone....

Hope that was helpful, and as always C&C are welcome and appriciated.

Cheers,

Hashshashin

*Many people were pretty upset that the nice pictures of the terrain are actually the resin masters and have a considerable more amount of detail than the vacu-suck-formed reality of the pieces, I still like them overall and use them regularly on our table but GW did pull a pretty rough bait-n-switch on us...

Monday, July 26, 2010

Sorry about the delay in posting, it started as some camera issues and evolved into some serious bloggavational issues, my modeling/hobby-ing has been going full speed, just my documentation of said hobby-ing is what has been lacking.

So here's some WIP's of what I've been up to:

^WIP of command group ^

^Heavy Weapon "Team" #1^

I have two teams similar to this one, but more pics later.

Keep this one short but more to come soon, thanks again and as always C&C welcomed